OpenSlide: A vendor-neutral software foundation for digital pathology
Open accessAbstract
Although widely touted as a replacement for glass slides and microscopes in pathology, digital slides present major challenges in data storage, transmission, processing and interoperability. Since no universal data format is in widespread use for these images today, each vendor defines its own proprietary data formats, analysis tools, viewers and software libraries. This creates issues not only for pathologists, but also for interoperability. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of OpenSlide, a vendor-neutral C library for reading and manipulating digital slides of diverse vendor formats. The library is extensible and easily interfaced to various programming languages. An application written to the OpenSlide interface can transparently handle multiple vendor formats. OpenSlide is in use today by many academic and industrial organizations world-wide, including many research sites in the United States that are funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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- Authors
- Goode, A., Gilbert, B., Harkes, J., Jukic, D., & Satyanarayanan, M.
- Affiliations
- Google (United States) (US)
- Carnegie Mellon University (US)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Corresponding author
- Satyanarayanan, Mahadev
- Venue
- Journal of Pathology Informatics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-01
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 27
- ISSN
- 2153-3539 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3815078
- OpenAlex
- W1977653087
- Cited by
- 546
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 54 · 2025: 65 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 74 · 2022: 78 · 2021: 57 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 34 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 10.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Pathology Informatics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- KiltHub Repository (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- KiltHub Repository
- Funders
- University of Pittsburgh (UL1TR000005, UL1RR024153)
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance
- National Institutes of Health (UL1TR000005, UL1-TR- 000005, UL1RR024153 and UL1TR000005)
- National Center for Research Resources (UL1RR024153)
- National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in cancer detection
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biophysics › Cell Image Analysis Techniques
- Keywords
- digital pathology, digital slides, C++ library, proprietary data formats, pathology informatics
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